


faltered at the line

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen, Grey Wardens, Vigil's Keep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-20 23:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3669519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years, Velanna has been a Grey Warden. Five years longer than she planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	faltered at the line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thievinghippo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thievinghippo/gifts).



> For all our sakes, let's pretend Oghren was never recruited. I suppose there's Nate/Velanna here, and you don't have to squint very hard to see it, but it's not the point.

_9:46 Dragon._

Six recruits took the Joining, this night, and only one survived.

Warden-Commander Surana held them on top of a tower, at sunset. It was the highest point of Vigil's Keep, and open to the sky; the only way off it was down narrow stone steps. Or to jump. There had been no runners this time, at least. It didn't make five people any less dead. 

Dead by her hand. By Velanna's own hand. She handed each of them the cup, and forced herself to look into their eyes when the taint claimed them. She'd thought it would get easier, when she volunteered for the task—that she was already hardened and cold and she could only get more hardened and _colder_. It had been five years. The leaden feeling in Velanna's stomach did not ease when the Warden-Commander sighed, squared her small shoulders—even for an elf, she was so small, half a head shorter than Velanna, even—and turned to face the last of her first recruits.

"Warden-Constable Nathaniel, have our brothers and sisters brought to the pyre," she said. Nathaniel shut his eyes and saluted her, right fist over his heart, and left to gather the Senior Wardens. "Warden-Constable Sigrun, take our new sister to her quarters to sleep it off. Warden-Constable Velanna, to me." 

_To me._ Nothing good ever followed that order. Sigrun shot her a pitying look, and Velanna didn't have the energy to bristle at her as she took the girl by the elbow. The girl was standing and conscious (barely), and walking (slowly), but not for long. She was Dalish, a young hunter, the vallaslin hardly dry on her face. She'd shown up at an archery tournament held in the Hero of Ferelden's honor, and she'd out-shot thirty humans for the honor of an almost certain death, far from clan and kith. 

_To me_. Velanna stood at the Warden-Commander's side and hid her trembling hands behind her back, as the Senior Wardens took the bodies away. 

"My Joining was behind a wall at Ostagar," the commander said, once she and Velanna were alone. She spoke softly, as though trying not to wake a child. She turned around and leaned her elbows on the crenellation and looked to the north, over the battlements below them, out at the countryside between them and the city. Anywhere but down at the courtyard, where the bodies were being prepared. "It was right on the eve of the battle." 

Velanna knew this story—the outlines of this story, at least. The fire in the tower, the betrayer's retreat, the witch's rescue. And then the long, long march. The Warden-Commander rarely spoke of the Blight, except to instruct them in the best ways to kill groups of darkspawn. And yet: there had been a time when Velanna would have snapped at her to get to the point and to let her go down to the pyre with Nathaniel. But this was a new telling, and it was a part of elven history, even if the commander didn't think of herself as one of the People. And the best way to keep a hahren talking was to be silent. 

The sun was fat and low on the horizon, and a breeze ruffled the commander's hair. "While Duncan recited the words, a troop of drunken soldiers were passing by on the other side. It smelled like mabari shit. A thousand unwashed bodies. When my recruits die, they'll die in the clean air," the commander went on, her voice tighter than Velanna had heard it since they'd razed Amaranthine. "I was the only survivor out of three. This"—she made a broad, sweeping gesture at the parapet—"is a better death than I would have had. Tell Sigrun to add Daveth of Denerim and Ser Jory of Highever to the list of the dead."

And with that, Velanna was dismissed. She made the walk down to the courtyard very slowly, her heart in her throat. There was no reason for the Warden-Commander to have told her that. Sigrun was kinder; Nathaniel always knew the right thing to say. Velanna was only good for fireballs, earthquakes, and frightening new Wardens into line. 

In the courtyard, the rest of the Wardens who'd answered the summons to Vigil's Keep, all two dozen of them, stood talking in loose groups, all of them staring determinedly away from the fire. Velanna went directly to Nathaniel, who looked naked without her or Sigrun next to him. 

"What did the commander want?" he asked, and put his big hand on the small of her back. 

She barely felt it through her tabard, but it was a comfort. Even so, she twisted away from his touch and scowled up at him. It was a ritual. She never pulled away entirely. "None of your business," she said. 

"As you say, my lady." 

A shouting match with him would boil off some of her tension, and lighten the mood as far as it could be lightened, but Warden-Commander Surana came down the steps. The assembled Wardens snapped to attention, heads bowed, fists over their hearts. But where the commander would have called forth all the mages to send the pyre up in one huge, fast blaze, she lit only the kindling, and then she left them. 

Before Nathaniel could speak, Velanna said, "The Warden-Commander is keeping her own vigil for our lost brothers and sisters tonight." They hung on her words, as through she were really First to the commander. "She says you can stay to watch the burning or go back to the barracks and sit in—in—contemplation." 

"At ease," Nathaniel added. 

"Right," Velanna said. "At ease, Wardens." 

Silence followed her announcement. Fewer people left than stayed. "She said no such thing," Nathaniel said, in a voice pitched only for her ears, watching the flames climb the kindling to lick at the wood. Velanna tugged at the Veil, and the fire jumped and caught the bottom of the blue-and-silver banners the recruits had been wrapped in. "Is she all right?" 

"None of your business," Velanna said, again. "None of _our_ business." She owed the Warden-Commander her life—as did Nathaniel, as did Sigrun. Just once, Velanna could protect her. "I'm going to find Sigrun and tell her she doesn't have to come down if she doesn't want to." 

"She'll want to," Nathaniel said. 

"Well, I'm giving her the option," Velanna snapped. 

Nathaniel's arm went around her shoulders, and suddenly she was very tired, too tired to shrug him off. He rested his chin on the top of her head, and she gave herself the moment to lean into him. "Go see Sigrun," he said.

\- - -

The barracks for the rank-and-file Wardens who stayed at the Vigil were quiet and immaculately clean, and there were never enough people to fill them up. Wooden bunks, stacked three high, lined each wall, and at some point enterprising Wardens had dredged up enough cushions and armchairs to make a circle in the middle of the room. It wasn't very military, but, then, of all of the first five recruits, only Sigrun had come from an army. If she didn't mind, and the Warden-Commander didn't mind, Velanna had no objections.

"Her name is Iriel of Clan Lavellan, in case you were wondering," Sigrun said, gesturing to the stool next to her. Velanna sat down. Sigrun kept the list of the dead and missing Wardens to be they sent to Weisshaupt every year; Velanna, who never went out recruiting, tried not to learn any names unless they survived. It didn't make seeing the Joinings any easier. "Iriel of the Grey Wardens now, I guess. Is the burning over already? What did the commander want? I'm having some food brought for when the kid wakes up, you hungry? 

She sounded _too_ cheery. It was reassuring: Sigrun, who laughed at the prospect of her own death, who led all of the most dangerous Deep Roads expeditions, was shaken up by tonight, too. "She's a Free Marcher, then," Velanna said. "She's a long way from home."

"Do you know the clan?" 

"I know her vallaslin." Sigrun leaned in; she liked Dalish tattoos, genuinely _liked_ them. Her own tattoos were a mark of shame, not honor, she'd said, once. Still, Velanna made a show of rolling her eyes and flipping to a blank page in the grimoire she kept at her hip. When she left the Wardens, she'd miss having all the paper she could possibly want. And she would leave them, eventually. She'd been telling herself so for years. "Sylaise. The Hearthkeeper. You can tell she's a Marcher because Sylaise's flame is stylized, but in Ferelden and southern Orlais, they draw it like this," she said, and showed Sigrun. A sketch in charcoal did it no justice. "The farther north you go, the more abstract vallaslin are. Happy?" 

"You know," Sigrun said, "you can just tell me what the commander said." 

The girl turned over and groaned in her sleep. Sigrun grimaced. Dwarves didn't dream. Velanna could still feel the bone-cracking pressure of Sigrun's grip when she'd woken up howling and sobbing, that first long night. _By the stone, what was that, I saw—I saw—_

 _If it was a true-dream, your spirit would be in the Beyond,_ Velanna had said. She'd done her level best to sound bored and jaded, as if being wracked with the same nightmares didn't bother her, and as if knowledge won from years of trying to dream as quietly as possible was any comfort. _And you would only know you were in the Beyond if you were a mage. You're not. You're sensing darkspawn. When you're awake, your conscious mind can ignore them, but when you're asleep, you can't. So you 'dream.'_

 _I was one of them,_ Sigrun had said, shuddering. _I was melting down dwarven shields for scrap. _And, well. Velanna couldn't just _leave_ her, after that. She'd stayed at Sigrun's side every night, until the Warden-Commander gave up trying to dissuade her and had Velanna's things moved to Sigrun's room.__

__Now, Sigrun reached out for the girl's slender hand and took it in her broad, scarred one._ _

__"The commander wants you to add some names to the list," Velanna said. "The other two recruits from her Joining. That's all."_ _

__"That's it?"_ _

__The temptation to tell Sigrun everything bubbled up in her, but for whatever reason, the commander had entrusted her with this. "The burning isn't over," she said, "it's just different this time. No fireballs. The commander didn't explain, so I made something up about private vigils. You don't have to go down if you don't want."_ _

__"She's messed up about this one, then," Sigrun said._ _

__Velanna found herself scowling. It was harder to pick a fight with Sigrun than it was to pick one with than Nathaniel, but she could manage it, if she tried. It would be circular and terrible, but she wouldn't have to talk about her conversation on the parapet, and Sigrun never took it personally. "And you're not?"_ _

__"I never said that," Sigrun began, but the girl let out a shriek, and her eyes flew open, her hand tightening on Sigrun's._ _

__"Oh, Creators," the girl said, looking frantically between Velanna and Sigrun. "Andruil's thousand arrows, it _burns._ " She settled on Velanna. There was a feverish brightness in her gaze. It was only the taint, tearing through her blood and bones, re-making her, but it made Velanna want to recoil nonetheless. "They say that great hahren fights at the Hero of Ferelden's side."_ _

"Tales grow in the telling"— _da'len, call her da'len, comfort her,_ it was on the tip of her tongue, but she faltered—"Warden. Do I look old to you? Am I dried-up and wrinkly?" 

__"No— _no_ , Warden-Constable," said the girl. "Ir abelas, if I give offense—"_ _

__"Easy, Warden," Sigrun said, "she's joking with you, Warden Iriel." There. Sigrun saved the day, as always. "If you look closely, she has one little wrinkle between her eyebrows."_ _

__"I do not," Velanna said._ _

__"You really do," Sigrun said, "and, anyway, she's not an elder. She's your sister. I'm your sister. The recruits who died tonight are your sisters, and your brothers. Every Grey Warden in Thedas is your—well, you get the idea."_ _

__The girl hadn't taken her eyes off of Velanna, and did not seem to have heard Sigrun's speech."I'm glad it's true," the girl said, "mostly true. It was good, that one of my own gave me the chalice. If I'd died like the rest of them—"_ _

__"You didn't," Velanna said, and tried to think of the right words, something reassuring Nathaniel or Sigrun would have said. She had nothing. "Count yourself lucky."_ _

__"Yes, Warden-Constable," the girl said, and, with one last shudder, fell back asleep._ _

__"Well," Sigrun said. "She seems like a good kid. Not that all our kids aren't good kids. Nate knows how to pick 'em."_ _

__"They're not our children," Velanna hissed. Five dead by her hand. One of them had been a noble; one, a templar; and the last three, elves Nathaniel had picked up in alienages. "Stop calling them our kids."_ _

__"Well, they're all we've got," Sigrun said. She let go of the girl's hand and took Velanna's, and Velanna, stunned and angry, jerked away from the contact. Sigrun held her fast. "You were going to have to have some kids to keep the old bloodlines going, right? And I wasn't about to bring another Duster in to the world, but, you know what? I love babies. I might have had one of my own anyway, if I hadn't joined the Legion. But now that's never going to happen for either of us."_ _

__The Grey Wardens were a means to an end. Velanna was only playing along, teaching some spoiled shemlen mages how to survive in a real fight, helping herself to Weisshaupt's trove of Dalish lore. But Seranni was somewhere out there: she could feel it, in the place in her gut where she felt the presence of all the darkspawn crawling far under the earth._ _

__But it had been two years without word from the Architect. At some point, the spoiled mages had become _her_ spoiled mages. She had reasons to stay, and one of them was half a fortress away, watching good people burn. The other one came off her stool to hug Velanna around her waist. _ _

__Velanna bit the inside of her cheek. "Come on, tell me what old Surana said to get you like this," Sigrun said._ _

__"If you must know," Velanna said stiffly. "She told me about her Joining. She said the death we give our recruits is kinder than the one she would have had, just because—because they die looking at the sunset. How can she say that? We kill four in five that come to us. Five out of six. Who knows."_ _

__"It's four in five," Sigrun said, with a sage nod._ _

__"That's not helpful, and you're all so calm about it," she said. "Why would she tell me? I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I was useless."_ _

__For a long while, Sigrun was silent. Wonderful. Velanna's hysterics had driven her off. She tried to pull away, but Sigrun's arms tightened, and there was no chance of escape. "It's because you're the one who cares the most, you idiot," Sigrun said. "You won't let anyone else prepare the blood or pass the chalice. You lead the most disciplined mages in Thedas—"_ _

__"Warden-Commander Clarel just said that to be polite," Velanna grumbled._ _

__"—and the commander figured you'd understand better than me or Nate how she feels about dead recruits."_ _

__"I hate it," Velanna said, swallowing hard. "But _someone_ has to do it." _ _

__Sigrun pulled away and held Velanna at arm's length. Even when she was serious, there was a smile in her eyes. There wasn't one, now. "Look. Anders took Justice and bolted for Kirkwall because he couldn't deal with responsibility, and now he lives in a sewer, last time we checked. _I_ wanted nothing more than to go off into the Deep Roads and get my Calling out of the way, because I'm still a Legionnaire, and a no-good duster, and that's all I'm good for: throwing myself at darkspawn, killing as many as possible, and dying._ _

__"But I stayed. I told myself, 'If Velanna can keep it together and not leave, even doing what she does at the Joining, even knowing her sister might not be dead, then I can stay, too.' So, there. Mystery solved! Let's go down to the burning."_ _

__Her voice had a brittle edge to it, but she _smiled_. Somehow, Sigrun smiled. Velanna felt the tears well up in her eyes, and she sobbed, just once, for her clan, for herself, for Seranni, for every recruit she'd watched fall up on that tower, for Sigrun's unwavering belief that she was nothing, when she meant so much to—all the Wardens. "I think I'll stay up here," she said. "If that's all right with you, lethallan."_ _

____

\- - -

__Velanna slept hunched over the girl's bed, and she dreamed mage-dreams, dreams of spirits come to tempt her with power and vengeance. They had nothing Velanna wanted. At some point in the night, Nathaniel and Sigrun returned from the burning to stay with her, and their new Warden. They slept on the floor, Nathaniel's head on Velanna's thigh, Sigrun's head on Nathaniel's shoulder._ _

__"Warden-Constable," Warden Iriel said, when she awoke, then looked at the floor next to her bed. "Oh. Warden-Constables. All of you."_ _

__"Come on, get dressed," Velanna said, holding out a hand to help her out of bed. "You survived the night. I knew you would. Let's go down to breakfast, da'len."_ _

**Author's Note:**

> [Sylaise's vallaslin in DA:O vs. DA:I. ](http://i.imgur.com/GaQsF8o.png)


End file.
